


Just A Sip

by watermelon_juice



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians & Related Fandoms - All Media Types, Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan
Genre: Angst, Drinking, Fluff, Friendship, Valentine's Day, cursing in spanish
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-19
Updated: 2017-02-19
Packaged: 2018-09-25 11:40:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,085
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9818837
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/watermelon_juice/pseuds/watermelon_juice
Summary: Who said Valentine's Day was only about romantic love?





	

**Author's Note:**

> This is for fyrblazequartz on Tumblr as my gift for the PJO Discord Valentine's exchange. Hope you like it!

Valentine’s Day. Lover’s Day. _‘We’re going to break up so we don’t need to get each other presents’ _Day.__

_Mierda. ___

It isn’t that Reyna hated the holiday itself, it’s just that it was a really a bad reminder. Not of Jason and her other past romantic failures, or even that stupid prophecy ( _damn you Aphrodite _) but for another ironic reason entirely. The Fates must have been really bored the day she was, um _created _, and thought that making the life of yet another mortal miserable was fine entertainment.____ Valentine’s Day was also her birthday.  


The day had been full of celebration, both for the holiday and for her. Her party had been a small and personal one though, and for that she was grateful. Nico had even showed up with a cake. She had been somewhat happy throughout the day, giving thank you’s to whoever had congratulated her.

But, as Reyna walked towards her villa, a creeping feeling of grief clutched at her heart. She walked slightly faster, as if she could physically escape the chill that crawled up her back. Many couples and families passed by her, heading home from various parties. They would wave at her and she politely waved back, letting a faint smile slip. A man walked by, carrying a little girl with pig tails on his shoulders. The girl was pulling at his hair slightly, but he didn’t seem to mind. Reyna felt her heart clench.

She sped up her steps and almost dropped her keys twice in the rush to open the door. She was finally able to open the damn thing and get in. Reyna slammed the door shut and leaned against it, letting out a deep breath and closing her eyes.

_Calm down. It’s nothing. ___

But it wasn’t _nothing _. It was easy to ignore the dull ache in her heart in public, with chattering and laughter so loud she could barely hear her own thoughts. But here, there was nothing to distract her from the heartache. Just her thoughts and an eerie silence. Sure, she had Aurum and Argentum, but they were already curled in on each other in the corner, dozing off. They had stayed inside all day; she thought perhaps tomorrow she’d make up for it and take them on a walk around the city.__

Reyna padded over to her room and changed her clothes ,coming back to the living room to collapse on her couch. It had been a long day, both physically and emotionally.

Reyna didn’t have anything against the so-called Lover’s Day, quite the contrary: she had something against her _birthday _. It brought back too many bittersweet memories and complicated feelings that she couldn’t process.__

Her life with her father had been anything but pleasant, but the Fates always found a way to make her more miserable. Every year on her birthday, her father would take her sister and her out for ice cream and a walk through the old city. He acted as if nothing was wrong, as if he wasn’t crazy, as if they were a perfectly normal family. Hylla would always be wary, holding onto Reyna’s hand and never taking her eyes off of him. If he noticed, he didn’t act on it. He would just smile and pat Reyna’s head.

The memory made her heart ache. It would hurt Reyna even more the next day, when he picked up where they’d left off. Fate had given her a sliver of hope for change, and snatched it away.

She opened her eyes to look around the room, and was reminded of how _alone _she was. It wasn’t true, she knew, plenty of people cared about her, but in that moment her mind chose to believe otherwise. That same feeling of desperation clawed at her heart and made her breathe a little bit harder.__

_I can’t. I can’t take this. No puedo. ___

She all but ran to the kitchen and ripped open the cabinet. Inside she found a bottle of some liquor she’d confiscated from Dakota. Reyna swore she kept it in her house for safe keeping, but her curiosity had gotten the better of her one particular dull night and she was hooked. Not on the taste, no, it tasted horrible, but from the burn. The momentary punch in the face she got whenever she drunk it that left her slightly dazed and disoriented. And  
wanting more. It made her _forget _.__

_It’s just a sip. It won’t hurt. ___

 

 

Half a bottle and a Steven Universe marathon later, she was sprawled on her couch happily munching on a large bag of jellybeans that Dakota had gifted her. Reyna vaguely remembered being sad about something, but she couldn’t quite name it now. Her mind was a warm, fuzzy haze and she was quite alright about that. That is ,until a slight knock at the door removed her from her dazed stupor. At first she decided to ignore it and continue with her jellybeans, but then it got more persistent. Reyna stood up sharply from the couch and stumbled over to the door.

_“A quién carajo se le ocurre aparerce a est- _puñeta!"__

Until she hit her toe on the leg of her table.

Still, she was relentless, and would not let such an injury stop her. Limping her way across her living room, she finally found the door and opened it. There stood Frank with a slight flush on his face and papers in his hand.

“I’m so sorry to bother you Reyna, I know it’s late and that I was supposed to give you this papers days ago but I was late on some other paperwork too so I finished that and I didn’t want to wait until tomorrow to give you this ‘cause then I’d be even _more _late but- what the heck happened to you?”__

The assault of so many words felt like murder on Reyna’s alcohol-muddled brain. So, she did what any decent host would: let him come in and shut the door behind him. Her mind was still trying to process his words, but he had spoken them so quickly, that she had only picked up on the last part.

_“Did you call me ugly?” _Reyna hissed out. She wasn’t particularly vain by any means, but had Frank really come all this way to insult her?__

“Uh, no! I said I was dropping off these papers,” Frank sputtered out. Reyna let out a small ‘oh’. “But…are you okay?” he asked having caught sight of the bottle of liquor on the table. Reyna leaned back against the door and crossed her arms over her chest, trying to act nonchalant, “Perfectly… _hicc _…fine,” She tried to cross her legs as well but stumbled, which caused her to smack her hands against the door to keep her balance.__

_Nailed it. ___

Reyna might as well have been doing the Macarena with the look Frank was shooting at her. He awkwardly sat down on the couch and placed the papers next to the jellybeans on the table in front. “So…did you, uh, enjoy your birthday party?"

Oh. It was her birthday. Right. So that’s why she’d been sad.

_Mierda. ___

“…Yeah,” she said making her way into the living room, careful to not injure yet another toe. Reyna plopped down next to Frank on the couch and threw her arm over her face.  
_Hm. I’m not exactly being the best hostess, _She thought.__

Reyna gestured vaguely to the forgotten bag of jellybeans on the table, “Want some?” She asked, hoping she was being polite enough.

Frank fidgeted and turned to face her, “No, thanks. But uh… you sure you’re okay?” he tried to phrase it in a way that she wouldn’t confuse it with calling her weak. He also didn’t want a fist in his face, thank you very much, although in her state he doubted she could land a punch. Still, he wasn’t about to start underestimating her.

Reyna let out a long sigh, and let her arm drop. She turned to look at Frank, and he was suddenly stunned at the look of pure exhaustion on Reyna’s face. Running her hands through her dark tresses, she undid her hair from its braid, letting it fall in loose waves down her back.

The liquor had hit her like a train and just made her _stop thinking _, but now its effects were slightly wearing off, letting the cold feeling of grief creep back into her heart.  
The alcohol was loosening its hold on her, but not enough so that her mouth would have a filter.__

“I feel like shit,” she said, as eloquently as you would expect a drunk person to be. “Too many memories, too many emotions, too _much _,” Frank could relate to that, to some extent. “Uh, we could talk about it. If you want to, that is,” He had no idea where this was gonna go, but it couldn’t be that bad right?__

“It’s ‘bout my dad,” Reyna slurred out, wrapping her arms around her knees. “Wasn’t the best uh, father figure out there, to say the least. He’d been stationed in Iraq a few years before I was born, came back and never was the same. He become paranoid, seeing enemies were there weren’t any, locked me and my sister in our rooms every night. Soon, he started seeing enemies in us,” Reyna took a shuddering breath, “But no matter what happened, every year on my birthday, and Hylla’s too, he would just stop. Would act as if nothing were wrong, as if he hadn’t screamed his lungs out to us the night before. Madness seemed to loosen its hold on him on those days. Hell, we would even go out for ice cream.”

Frank felt a sudden rush of sympathy make its way into his heart. Looking at Reyna like this, curled into herself, looking smaller than she was, he was heartbroken. Gone was the impassive face, replaced by tired and rueful eyes. 

He had the sudden urge to put his hand on her shoulder, but restrained himself.”I…didn’t know,"

“Of course you didn’t, no one does. Well, except Nico, and now you, I guess,” Reyna took a long deep breath, as if something heavy had been dropped on her chest, “I wish I could hate him you know, could loathe him for all he did but I can’t,” Her voice cracked on the last word, “He was my dad, and I hate myself for still loving him,”

_That’s it _, Frank thought, _I don’t care if she guts me. _____

Frank spread his arms and held them out awkwardly, “You can hug it out if you, uh, want,”

_Smooth. ___

Surprisingly, Reyna actually accepted the offer. It wasn’t a hug exactly though; she just leaned her curled body into Frank’s warm arms and laid her head on his chest. Frank felt slightly lost in the situation, but he toughed it out. _It’s about her comfort, not your own. Besides, she’s your friend. _Who would have seen that coming, Frank comforting the stoic praetor of New Rome?__

_You’re a praetor too, stupid, _He thought.__

“Where is he now? Can’t you visit him?” he might be pushing this too far, but the words had already left his mouth. Reyna tensed up against him. _Okay, definitely shouldn’t have asked. ___

“He’s gone,” She wasn’t going to go into detail about that one.

Reyna stayed quiet and Frank thought about something to say to fill up the silence. She had shared quite a lot of her private life with him, it only seemed fair he do so in turn. So he carefully leaned back against the couch, Reyna still in his embrace and started, “My mom was a soldier for the Canadian army in Afghanistan. She died saving her squad a while back. I still miss her every day,” And it still hurt him to say it. It’ll probably never stop hurting.

A small voice rang out, “I’m sorry,” a pause, “Why are you telling me this?”

Frank smiled, “A loss for a loss, a secret for a secret. We must all feel and accept our emotions, Reyna, no matter how complicated and bizarre they may be. Also, we shouldn’t drink them away; pretty sure your liver’s having the workout of its life.”

He heard a snort muffled into the fabric of his shirt, and Reyna met his eyes with a teasing glare. “Are you scolding me, Zhang?”

“No, I just don’t want you to die before you’re forty,”

“Fair enough,"

**Author's Note:**

> Have any thoughts? Leave them below!


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